Using Shiny to Combat Urban Food and Data Inequity

ShinyConf 2024

Andrew Vancil
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

Data and Food Inequity

  • It is important to democratize and make accessible public data for public use
  • In Cincinnati, over 270,000 households are food insecure
  • The problem is deep and wide, with many negative outcomes among children

Community Data Explorer for Cincinnati

  • CoDEC is a data repository composed of equitable, community-level data for Cincinnati
  • This data can be accessed via the {codec} R package

https://geomarker.io/codec/

System to Achieve Food Equity

The System to Achieve Food Equity (SAFE) is a network of individuals and organizations that are committed to improving food security in Cincinnati to ensure that all 66,000 children have the food that they need to grow, develop, learn, and thrive

Shiny Implementation

CoDEC Data Explorer

  • Built in Shiny, extensively using {bslib}, {leaflet} and {ggiraph}, we developed a data explorer so that public users can visualize different relationships across the various CoDEC data items

SAFE Dashboard

  • The SAFE stakeholders that contribute their meals provided data needed a public-facing dashboard to track overall meal coverage in Cincinnati neighborhoods
  • Built primarily using {bs4Dash} and {ggiraph}

Successes

  • Built on the {codec} package, the CoDEC data explorer is a self-updating data tool that allows users to visualize a wide swath of public data
  • The SAFE dashboard provides previously non-existent data aggregation, standardization and visualization
  • All SAFE dashboard updates and feature additions are pulled from community stakeholders

Thank you!

  • Dr. Cole Brokamp and the rest of our group at Cincinnati Children’s

  • The SAFE team across Cincinnati

  • Appsilon for putting on the awesome ShinyConf and letting me share our story

  • https://andrew-vancil.github.io/shinyconf24/